Factfulness

Flatiron Books
Paperback
352 pages • $17.99
ISBN: 9781250123824

Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling
with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

“This magnificent book ends with a plea for a factual world view. Rosling was optimistic that this outlook will spread, because it is a useful navigational tool in a complex world,
and a genuine antidote to negativity and hopelessness.”

—Nature

When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

Hans Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health and renowned public educator. He was an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, and co-founded Médecins sans Frontières in Sweden and the Gapminder Foundation. His TED talks have been viewed more than 35 million times, and he was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Hans died in 2017.

Ola Rosling  and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans’s son and daughter-in-law, are co-founders of the Gapminder Foundation. They have both received international awards for their work.

Factfulness has been adopted for 13 First-Year Experience programs:

Bellarmine University (KY); Elon University (NC); Fresno State University (CA); James Madison University’s Honors College (VA); North Central Texas College; Otterbein University (OH); Pennsylvania State University – New Kensington; Saddleback College (CA); Skidmore College (NY); Stockton University (NJ); the University of California at Riverside; the University of South Carolina; the University of Texas at Tyler

Voices from the Rust Belt

Picador
Paperback
256 pages • $16.00
ISBN: 9781250162977

Edited by Anne Trubek

“The essays run the gamut from sad and nostalgic to angry or hopeful, inviting the reader to see these towns as more than just a negative headline or a statistic.”

—New York Post

Where is America’s Rust Belt? It’s not quite a geographic region but a linguistic one, first introduced as a concept in 1984 by Walter Mondale. In the modern vernacular, it’s closely associated with the “Post-Industrial Midwest,” and includes Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York. The region reflects the country’s manufacturing center, which, over the past forty years, has been in decline. In the 2016 election, the Rust Belt’s economic woes became a political talking point, and helped pave the way for a Donald Trump victory. But the region is neither monolithic nor easily understood. The truth is much more nuanced. Voices from the Rust Belt pulls together a distinct variety of voices from people who call the region home. Voices that emerge from familiar Rust Belt cities—Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and Buffalo, among other places—and observe, with grace and sensitivity, the changing economic and cultural realities for generations of Americans.

© Tanya Rosen-Jones

Anne Trubek is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses, and the co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology.

Voices from the Rust Belt has been adopted for First-Year Experience programs at:

Grand Rapids Community College (MI); Johnson State Community College (KS)

Spare Parts

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Paperback
240 pages • $15.00
ISBN: 9780374534981

 Teaching Guide
•
Los Inventores
Spanish Language Edition
Paperback
224 pages • $14.00
ISBN: 9780374284503

Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream

Joshua Davis

Finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

“Spare Parts illuminates the human side of two polarizing political issues: immigration and education.”

—The Washington Post

In 2004, four undocumented Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much—but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT. This was never a level competition, and yet, against all odds . . . they won! But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan. Joshua Davis’s Spare Parts is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country—even as the country tried to kick them out.

“Spare Parts is an unforgettable tale of hope and human ingenuity. Joshua Davis offers a moving testament to how teamwork, perseverance, and a few good teachers can lift up and empower even the humblest among us.”—Héctor Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark

“It’s the most American of stories: how determination and ingenuity can bring triumph over long odds. There are too few stories like these written about Latino students. Poignant and beautifully told, Spare Parts makes you feel their frustration at the obstacles and indignities faced by Cristian, Lorenzo, Luis, and Oscar—and to cheer as they rise to overcome each one of them.”—Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey 

“This is important reading . . . Young adults will benefit from from reading and discussing this realistic, eye-opening chronicle . . . Davis pulls no punches as he describes the grim sociopolitical atmosphere that allows the oppression of talented people for no morally acceptable reason. The four young inventors and their struggles helped spur the DREAMers movement.”—Donna Chavez, Booklist (starred review)

“A gratifying human interest story that calls attention to the plight and promise of America’s undocumented youth.”—Library Journal

“Davis takes what could have been another feel-good story of triumphant underdogs and raises the stakes by examining the difficulties of these young immigrants in the context of the societal systems that they briefly and temporarily overcame.”—Publishers Weekly

© Sebastian Mlynarski

Joshua Davis is a contributing editor at Wired, co-founder of Epic magazine, and the author of The Underdog, a memoir about his experiences as an arm wrestler, backward runner, and matador. He has also written for The New Yorker, and his writing is anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Technology Writing. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Spare Parts has been adopted for over fifty-four First-Year Experience programs:

Alamo Heights High School (TX); Broward College (FL); The Browning School (NY); California State University – Los Angeles; California State University – Maritime; Cedar Valley College (TX); Chemeketa Community College (OR); Concordia University (TX); Crafton Hills College (CA); Des Moines Area Community College (IA); Eastfield College (TX); Greenville Technical College (SC); Hesston College (KS); Hood College (MD); Johns Hopkins University (MD); Kansas State University; Lafayette Public Library and School District (LA); Lewis University (IL); Metropolitan Community College – Maple Woods (MO); Miami University (OH); Monroe Community College (NY); Naugatuck Valley Community College (CT); Nash Community College (NC); North Iowa Area Community College; North Lake College (TX); Norwalk Community College (CT); Oakland University, The Honors College (MI); Pasadena City College (CA); Providence College (RI); Queensborough Community College (NY); Rensselear Polytechnic University (NY); Rutgers University, Honors College (NJ); Sacramento State University (CA); Salem State University (MA); Santa Ana College; San Jose State University (CA); Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ); Stony Brook University (NY); Texas A&M University; Texas A&M University Commerce; Texas Lutheran University; Towson University’s Honors College; University of Alaska – Southeast; University of Houston – Clear Lake (TX); University of North Carolina – Charlotte; University of South Alabama; University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science; University of Michigan College of Engineering; Washington State University, Vancouver; Winthrop University (SC)

The Sun Does Shine

St. Martin’s Griffin
Paperback
368 pages • $18.99
ISBN: 9781250309471

How I Found Life, Freedom, and Justice

Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin

Foreword by Bryan Stevenson
Oprah’s Book Club Selection
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

“Illuminating and emotionally powerful, simple and complex, and destined to become a classic in American prison literature.”

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence, and ultimately set him free. But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but to find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015. With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

© Cody Love

Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly thirty years on death row for crimes he did not commit. Released in April 2015, Hinton now speaks widely on prison reform and the power of faith and forgiveness. He lives in Alabama.

The Sun Does Shine has been adopted for more than 10 First-Year Experience programs:

Bluegrass Community and Technical College (KY); Colorado Mountain College; Metropolitan State University of Denver; Purdue University Northwest (IN); St. John’s University (NY); Utah Valley University; University of California Merced; University of Alabama Honors College; Utah Valley University (two consecutive selections)

This I Believe

Holt Paperbacks
Paperback
320 pages • $18.00
ISBN: 9780805086584

The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women

Edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

Foreword by Studs Terkel

Introduction by Jay Allison

Based on the NPR series of the same name, this book features eighty essayists—from the famous to the unknown—completing the thought that begins the book’s title. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a well-known list of contributors—including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island’s parole board. The result is a trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best.

Included are guidelines for students writing their own This I Believe essays.

“Essays from the original series are interleaved with contemporary essays (selected from more than 11,000 submissions) to create a resounding chorus.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist

© Nubar Alexanian

© Nubar Alexanian

Jay Allison is an independent broadcast journalist and a six-time Peabody Award winner. He hosted and produced This I Believe on NPR and is the founder of the public radio station on Cape Cod.

Dan Gediman is currently the Executive Director of This I Believe, Inc., a non-profit organization based in Louisville, Kentucky.

This I Believe has been adopted for more than ninety First-Year Experience programs:

Aquinas College (MI); Avila University (MO); Baker University (KS); Barry University (FL); Bates College (ME); Bellarmine University (KY); Bethel College (KS); Bluefield College (VA); Bowling Green State University (OH); Bucknell University (PA); California State University, San Marcos; Cathedral High School (MA); Cedar Crest College (PA); Central Washington University; Clemson University (SC); Coker College (SC); College of Dupage (IL); Columbus State University (GA); Concord University (WV); Craven Community College (NC); Dakota Wesleyan University (SD); Dominican College (NY); Eastern Illinois University; Elmhurst College (IL); Endicott College (MA); Florida Atlantic University; Florida State University; Georgia College; Georgia Highlands University; Gettysburg College Ascent Program (PA); Harrison High School (NY); Jacksonville State University (AL); Jacksonville University (FL); Kaskaskia College (IL); Kent State University (OH); LIM College (NY); Lindsey Wilson College (KY); Louisburg College (NC); Louisiana Tech University; Loyola University, Chicago; Medaille College (NY); Middle Tennessee State University; Minnesota State University, Mankato; Mitchell College (CT); Morehead State University (KY); Northern Arizona University; Northern Kentucky University; Pace University (NY); Penn State Berks (IL); Penn State Berks (PA);  Ripon College (WI); Roberts Wesleyan College (NY); Roosevelt University (IL) (two consecutive years!); Seton Hall University (NJ); Seton Hill University (PA); Shepherd University (WV); Shorter University (GA); Southern Connecticut State University;  Southern Vermont College; Springfield College (MA); Stonehill College (MA); St. Mary’s High School (NY); SUNY, Binghamton; SUNY, Brockport; Tufts University (MA); University of Alabama; University of Central Arkansas, Honors College; University of Dayton (OH); University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; University of Louisiana, Monroe (two years!); University of Louisville (KY) (three consecutive years!); University of New Orleans; University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; University of Vermont; Washburn University (KS); William Paterson University (NJ); William Woods University (MO)

This I Believe II

Holt Paperbacks
Paperback
288 pages • $18.00
ISBN: 9780805090895

More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women

Edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

With John Gregory and Viki Merrick

“By turns moving, thoughtful, cheering and heartbreaking, in an age of irony these essays offer a little something to believe in.”

—Colette Bancroft, St. Petersburg Times

This second collection of This I Believe essays gathers seventy-five more essayists—including writers known and unknown—who complete the thought that begins in the book’s title. Among the contributors are musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Bela Fleck, Elie Wiesel, the founder Craigslist.org, and an anthropology student at the University of Chicago. Each piece, whether poignant or humorous, compels the reader to think about how they have formed their own personal beliefs and about the extent to which they express them to others. This edition also contains an appendix on how to write a This I Believe essay.

© Nubar Alexanian

© Nubar Alexanian

Jay Allison, the host and curator of This I Believe, is an independent broadcast journalist.

Dan Gediman is the executive producer of This I Believe.

This I Believe II has been adopted for more than thirty First-Year Experience programs:

Aquinas College (MI); Barry University (FL); Broward College (FL); Eastern Illinois University; Endicott College (MA); Hanover College (IN); Ivy Tech Community College, Kokomo (IN); LIM College (NY) (two consecutive years!); Lindsey Wilson College (KY); Longwood University (VA); Lynchburg College (VA); Marietta College (OH); Miami University at Ohio; Middle Tennessee State University; Middlesex Community College (MA); North Central College (IL); Northern Illinois University; Penn State University, Brandywine; Rivier University (NH); Rowan University (NJ); Stockton College (NJ); Tennessee Tech University (two consecutive years); Texas Woman’s University; Union College (KY); University of Dayton (OH); University of Wisconsin, Parkside; Virginia Tech; Washington & Jefferson College (PA)

When They Call You a Terrorist

St. Martin’s Griffin
Paperback
288 pages • $16.99
ISBN: 9781250306906

A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele

With a foreword by Angela Davis

“When They Call You a Terrorist is more than just a reflection on the American criminal justice system. It’s a call to action for readers to change a culture that allows for violence against people of color.”

—Time

For Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin. Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering
inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country—and the world—that Black Lives Matter.

© Curtis Moore

© Michael Hnatov Photography

Patrisse Khan-Cullors is an artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, California. Co-founder of Black Lives Matter, she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, public speaker, and the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize recipient.

asha bandele is the award-winning author of The Prisoner’s Wife and four other works. Honored for her work in journalism and activism, asha is a mother, a former senior editor at Essence, and a senior director at the Drug Policy Alliance.

When They Call You a Terrorist has been adopted for 11 First-Year Experience programs, including at:

American University (DC); California State University Northridge; Highland Community College (IL); the University of Richmond; Northern Illinois University (two consecutive years); East Los Angeles College (CA) (two consecutive years); Tuskegee University (AL); University of California Santa Barbara; University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia College

The Sixth Extinction (10th Anniversary Edition)

Henry Holt Paperbacks
Paperback
352 pages • $19.99
ISBN: 9781250887313

An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

“In her timely, meticulously researched and well-written book, Kolbert combines scientific analysis and personal narratives to explain it to us. The result is a clear and comprehensive history of earth’s previous mass extinctions—and the species we’ve lost—and an engaging description of the extraordinarily complex nature of life. Most important, Kolbert delivers a compelling call to action.”

—Al Gore, The New York Times Book Review

Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

© Barry Goldstein

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

The Sixth Extinction has been adopted for 21 First-Year Experience programs at:

American University (DC); Colgate University (NY); Lafayette College (PA); Linfield College (OR); Occidental College (CA); Feather River College (CA); Millsaps College (MS); Montclair State University’s Presidential Scholars Program (NJ); Montana State University; NYU-Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; Piedmont Virginia Community College; Rowan University (NJ); Saint Francis High School (CA); Stanford University (CA);  Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ); Sweet Briar College (PA); University of Michigan – Flint; University of Vermont; Villanova University (PA); Williams College (MA)

Dreamland

Bloomsbury
Paperback
400 pages • $18.00
ISBN: 9781620402528

The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic

Sam Quinones

With a New Afterword by the Author
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“Dreamland—true crime, sociology, and exposé—illuminates a catastrophe unfolding all around us, right now.”

—Slate 

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma’s campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive—extremely addictive—miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin—cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico’s west coast, independent of any drug cartel—assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico. Introducing a memorable cast of characters—pharma pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, and parents—Quinones shows how these tales fit together. Dreamland is a revelatory account of the corrosive threat facing America and its heartland.

Sam Quinones is a journalist, author and storyteller whose two acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction about Mexico and Mexican immigration—True Tales From Another Mexico and Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream—made him, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “the most original writer on Mexico and the border.” He lives in Los Angeles.

Dreamland has been adopted for 10 First-Year Experience programs:

Catawba Valley Community College (NC); College of Southern Nevada; Good Samaritan College of Nursing and Health Science (OH); Ohio Northern University; Otterbein University (OH); Ralph Macon College’s Honors College (VA); University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus; Virginia Commonwealth University; Westfield State University (MA)

How to College

St. Martin’s Griffin
Paperback
304 pages • $17.99
ISBN: 9781250225184

What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There)

Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Hope Schwartz

The transition from high school—and home—to college can be stressful for students and their families. Students and parents arrive on campus unprepared for what college is really like. Academic standards and expectations are different from high school; families aren’t present to serve as “scaffolding” for students; and students have to do what they call “adulting.” Nothing in the college admissions process prepares students for these new realities. As a result, first-year students report higher stress, more mental health issues, and lower completion rates than in the past. In fact, up to one third of first-year college students will not return for their second year—and colleges are reporting an increase in underprepared first-year students. How to College—“with suggestions that are spot on” (The New York Times Book Review)—is here to help. Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Schwartz guide first-year students and their families at any point in the transition process, during the summer after high school graduation and throughout the school year, to prepare them to succeed and thrive as they transition and adapt to college. The first practical guide of its kind, this book draws on the authors’ experience teaching and working with thousands of first-year college students over decades.

© Carly Glazier

© Mike Olliver

Andrea Malkin Brenner is a sociologist who speaks with high school and college students, parents, faculty, and staff on all things related to college transitions. Dr. Brenner served as a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at American University for 20 years and directed their University College program, the university’s oldest & largest living-learning community for first-year students.

Lara Hope Schwartz teaches in the Department of Government at the American University School of Public Affairs (SPA) and is the Director of the Project on Civil Discourse. She came to the SPA after a career as an attorney, civil rights advocate, and strategist.

How to College has been adopted for First-Year Experience programs at:

Belmont Abbey College (NC); Madonna University (MI); Rowan University (NJ)